White House releases Obamacare enrollment numbers

3 years ago

(Washington, DC) -- Roughly 106,000 people are successfully enrolled in the new healthcare exchanges. Releasing data from October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said another 975,000 have applied but have not yet selected healthcare plans. She noted that the numbers are being held down by the troubled launch of the HealthCare.Gov website. Less than 27,000 consumers have been able to enroll through the website. The administration hopes to have major glitches in the website fixed by November 30th.

Sebelius said the "marketplace is working and people are enrolling" in federal and state exchanges. In order for Obamacare to be successful, there will have to be about half-a-million enrollments per month during the six month open enrollment period. In earlier remarks, White House spokesman Jay Carney set a low bar of expectations and predicted that "no one will be satisfied" with the numbers from the first month. Sebelius expressed confidence that enrollment numbers will "grow substantially in the next five months."